Permanently Deleted
Astonishingly bad response.
You're sorry for calling all of the women and non-binary, POC, queer, and gender-nonconforming posters who shared and discussed reactionary rhetoric 'cishet white men', because what you actually meant to say was that they're privileged, antisocial first-worlders who are intentionally disseminating material that will harm people in order to virtue signal that they're one of the good ones. What are these users who you slandered supposed to get out of this as an apology? "Oh, well, thank goodness they don't think I'm a cishet white man; they actually just think that I'm an overprivileged cynic who's hurting people outside of the imperial core to signal to the website masses that I'm part of the in-group". Completely ridiculous, and an equally complete failure to understand any of the concerns being brought up by the (wrongfully) banned and then (rightfully) unbanned users over the past few days.
Minor props for at least willing to own up to the fact that you said it, but this clearly just doubling-down on the same sentiment with different language.
what actually happened ?
I don't understand any of this ?
I didn't post on either of those two communities but I did comment on them and like them ,I am a Palestinian who lives in the west bank ,surely I am not privileged lol
You're absolutely correct. The rhetoric in the apology doesn't make sense, because it assumes that the people who posted in those communities were all first-worlders with imperial core privilege, which is an absurd assumption to make without doing any investigation. I'm very surprised by how this is being presented as something so clearly true that there doesn't need to be any evidence or testimony to back it up, only vibes. I'm already annoyed enough at myself and other users being told that we're white, cis men, and I'm doubly annoyed that the apology that's meant to make it better is instead accusing us of being misanthropic clout-chasers. I can't imagine how much more upset I'd be if I didn't live in the imperial core on top of all of this.
It's just so many ridiculous guesses on top of ridiculous guesses. It doesn't even make sense. I've been paying attention to everything and I don't understand it either.
Are the admins of this site Libs who are trying to appease other turbo libs on other instances ?
did this have to do with the US elections
I am so so confused by all of this
I don't think the admins are libs, but I do think (and this post is evidence) that some of them are reactionary.
but I do think (and this post is evidence) that some of them are reactionary.
so why can't we replace them?
if these people don't like hexebear and aren't part of the user base they shouldn't mod it
so why can't we replace them?
We can. We simply need an admin like @CARCOSA@hexbear.net to (please) step in and defrock them.
I think her intention is to go against what she believes to be some privileged pickme's on this site. Like when a privileged person shares the horrid takes they hear with a marginalized person in order to flash their "I'm not like them" credentials and collect brownie points for not being actively harmful. Except that means the marginalised person has to hear the horrid takes which already can cause harm.
That's how I understand it anyway.
That is not at all why I participated in the tanks. Further, just quoting the admin line isn't helpful here.
That is not at all why I participated in the tanks
and I am a Palestinian who commented there ,btw I do live in Palestine (nablus) so I am pretty sure I am not a "privileged pick me"
edited my original comment, is that helpful or should i just nuke it?
I think it's helpful. It's good to make sure there's no misunderstandings, and your sentiment shown here by asking a followup is kind hearted.
sorry I was just trying to clarify what I understood the admin meant to mohammed, not comment on truthfulness of that statement.
No, it is weighing the value of dunking vs people getting exposed to the hateful stuff that gets dunked on. At least when it comes to this post.
Here you go Mohammed, I write up a timeline of sorts
https://hexbear.net/comment/5621652And it is just petty online drama, but @dustbunnies@hexbear.net has written some good words about how online spaces can be important and shouldn't just be disregarded as nothing worth worrying about
For you in your situation this must all seem even more ridiculous though. I'm sorry and embarassed that this is what is big on the site right now.I'm sorry and embarassed that this is what is big on the site right now.
thankfully I wasn't active when the shitshow happened,I only saw the name change thing and I was like that's fine because racism is intolerable and while I found it weird That they wanted to replace them with something different ,I was sad but that was about it
Alhamdulillah I missed the rest of this ,also TC69 seems like a smug condescending jerk
Alhamdulillah I missed the rest of this ,also TC69 seems like a smug condescending jerk
:yea: I don't really get the celebrity culture we have here for some posters
Yup, this is less of an apology and self-crit than it is just a rephrasing of why the site is being forced to accept the changes coming down the pipe. "Your community my choice." Not to mention the use of "gossip" again and trying to make that horseshit decision work.
Jesus Christ saying an action gives "cishet white man vibes" is not calling any performer of said action a cishet white man, this is very basic reading comprehension.
It's a poor choice of words but it shouldn't be a difficult concept for supposed Marxists to understand that anyone can contribute to white supremacy, heteronormativity, and patriarchy. Cringe content is something we inherited from the predominantly cishet white male site we broke off from, so making that connection isn't a stretch at all.
Expecting your unpaid servants to grovel for the sin of voicing an opinion on how their labor is coordinated is frankly disgusting.
joined 3mo ago
I am not asking them to grovel. I am asking them to take some basic accountability for an event that came close to destroying the site by promoting themselves to poster.
Yeah that's actually a good idea, you don't deserve their or anyone's labor
Reading comprehension
Quit infantilising people for not sharing your point of view. People do not have to write out a long explanation for something that has already been explained, yet @AcidSmiley@hexbear.net did do so. That post has been up for a good amount of time, yet you decide to write this short and needlessly hostile response instead of engaging with her text. Either because you do not care about what you claim to care about or because you yourself lack basic reading comprehension skills.
It's a poor choice of words but it shouldn't be a difficult concept for supposed Marxists to understand that anyone can contribute to white supremacy, heteronormativity, and patriarchy.
That's not what is being said by ZL however. I wish you were able to continue this line of thought and investigate your own behaviour.
this frequently quoted line is mine. i was not calling you, reader, a white cishet man. i am sorry for the clumsy phrasing and i believe i genuinely hurt some my comrades who are POC, trans/GNC, gay, and women. i used “white cishet man” as a placeholder for “very privileged person.”
I am explicitly calling for your resignation after that not-pology.
I am explicitly calling for your resignation
This looks like the unanimous sentiment.
it is an apology
edit: i really do want you to know that i am sorry for using that language. the interpretation of that statement was not how i intended.
If you wrote something someone thought was very privileged, and they said your post had "white cishet man vibes", would you think that they were possibly using clumsy language and did not intend the statement to be interpreted how it was written?
I think you sincerely believe it was a clumsy statement but I don't think you've given yourself the time to reflect* on how you came to use that phrasing on a website with a majority (I think?) of trans users.
*Obviously you can't "win" in this scenario where you want to give an apology quickly because you recognise it has caused harm.
If you think the issue was "clumsy phrasing", you grokked nothing from nearly destroying the site and should not wield power over its users.
e: the sentiment behind it shows outright contempt for the userbase, even moreso after your explanation.
i should have specified the type of posting instead of using “dunk culture.”
It is not about being insufficiently specific. It is about feeling that a subset of posters are not wanted, and crashing out when you realize the damage blanket banning them would cause. I've enjoyed a lot of your posts and would welcome you in the posting trenches, but this certainly ain't it.
Impossible to know how many people were driven off by it, but you served a plate of turds, and upon getting it sent back to the kitchen, picked out a few pieces of corn, put it on a differently colored plate and served it again.
E: I don't mean to single you out in particular, if anyone is emblematic of the problem it would be @replaceable. You making this post is more than they did.
However, one of the most directly damaging sprays of gasoline onto this fire was from your hands, and I really don't think any form of apology cuts it as far as accountability goes.
I've mostly stayed the fuck out of this struggle session, but i think i unfortunately need to pitch in at this point. I do not think the general gist of the outrage directed at that statement runs along the lines of "a mod made an intentionally hurtful statement to misgender trans comrades, question the femininity of women and accuse POC comrades of being white on the inside". That would be a far-fetched, malicious and inaccurate conclusion. I believe it is a much more common perception, and also my perception, that your statement showed certain ideas you have internalized, and have not reflected upon properly. This is why people ITT accuse you of a nonpology - you go for the "i was misunderstood and actually meant something else" line instead of confronting your subconscious bias.
As trans people, we've all grown up in a deeply and disgustingly transphobic, exorsexist, cishetnormative and gender essentialist society, and like the cishet people around us, we have all internalized some of that. Upon cracking, we can begin to realize this and build a new framework for how we understand gender and sexuality, but that is not done within a day, it is a process. And with a lot of the fellow trans people on this site, i see that they are struggling with reactionary artifacts in their attitudes that they have not yet questioned and debunked for themselves. Hexbear is generally what i consider to be a safer space for trans comrades, i know i am welcomed, represented and protected here, but unfortunately our trans community isn't as radical about gender as many of us want to believe. It's not as bad as trans reddit, outspoken transmeds and enbiephobes are rare and quickly get the hammer, and we've had a lot of learning with the heavier use of CWs in the trans mega and the discussions around Julia Serrano and enbiephobia, but a lot of work still remains to be done.
A part of that work, and where my criticism of your statement comes into play, is the field of gender essentialism. I understand your critique of the tanks, the comm does show aspects of the site culture that i am personally not very comfortable with. I view this site mostly as a safer space and a place of community that helps comrades with personal growth, offers them assistance and acts as a bullwark for marginalized comrades who need a break from the liberalism in other safer spaces. A place where you can, for example, be both openly trans and openly Marxist-Leninist. Others view it as an unapologetic dirtbag hive. A place where you find community in a shared rage at the conditions we live under, were we are free from insincere demands for civility and decorum and can revel in tearing into reactionaries without restraint and mercy. Were we can enjoy the rare feeling of being, as was a popular quote on the old sub, "numerous and beligerent", an infamous and dreaded shitposter brigade. These are the two faces of hexbear.
When you claimed that this second face of hexbear gave off "white cishet man" vibes, you made a gender essentialist assumption: That being coarse, uncouth, aggressive and loud is a trait of hegemonial (white and cishet) masculinity. Women are described as "hysterical" and "b_tchy" and "hormonally imbalanced" when we exhibit such traits (i've been on the receiving end of all of that a lot over the last years). Queers are slandered as "shrill" and "drama queens" when they do. Transfeminine people in particular are attacked with the concept of "male socialization", a common Terf strategy to silence us when we speak up. POC, especially black people, are constantly policed for signs of aggressive behavior and demanded to be calm and collected to not upset the whiteys, threatened with disproportionate, sometimes lethal, responses when they show any signs of agitation.
The "cishet white man vibes" line is not a callout of privilege. It is securing the privilege of white cishet men that reserves uncivility for them and only them. I get that wasn't your intention. But that's besides the point here. You need to confront which effect your statement had, understand the hurt it caused and demonstrate the introspection that is needed to overcome this kind of sentiment.
"I didn't mean to say you're white cishet men, I meant to say you're privileged assholes!"
Yeah some apology
It isn't. You are defending your actions and explaining how we merely misunderstood you.
Whatever your intent, your action was to call the reader a white cishet man. Your attempt at clearing up that confusion does not make it much better to be honest. Now you're just calling people who enjoy it "very privileged". It's indicative of the same mindset. You are making your own judgement about a group of people you disagree with and cataloguing them into some group that allows you to feel good about thinking ill of them. You know nothing about that group of people. This statement is hurtful and ridiculous too. Here's one clear example whyNobody thought you meant to intentionally misgender people. That's not why folks are pissed at you for writing that. They're pissed at you for the subconscious bias it reveals, and that is also why this isn't an apology. You're going for "I was misunderstood actually" instead of listening to what people are critiquing you for.
Not sure self-crit is the correct place to post this if 95% of the post is criticism of others.
Especially when it's being used to restart an argument about the issue where everyone else has agreed to take time to cool off for a while.
So it was you
All of this was your and tc69s fault
Thank you for admitting it, reactionary.
Now it will be clear that the only ones who pushed those changes were reactionaries, irony-poisoned assholes, and wreckers
Maybe I'm out of the loop but why the fuck does 1 mod being a reactionary have the power to nearly shut the site down?
Why is this mod still a mod? Why are they not completely banned from the site? How are they so bad at this that even in their "apology" they're just shitting all over the same users again?
This. Please step up by stepping down, @ZoomeristLeninist@hexbear.net.
gossip is just dunk tank with a new name. its an honest name. elonposting is gossip, its fun! revel in how much we hate the wannabe god-emperor! gossip is not inherently bad, gossip can save lives.
I don't understand how this aligns with "look at this person calling for your execution" and the intended prevention of misanthropy, because many of the dredge tank people are just repeating the views of more notable people?
when two women share with each other which men have made them uncomfortable or assaulted them, that is considered gossip. some gossip helps people, some gossip is just fun.
In this scenario, wouldn't this only qualify for inclusion if the men assaulting them were notable? Also, given the overwhelming majority of SA is committed by men, doesn't this impact the issue of misanthropy with, for example, many women quite rationally preferring to be alone in a forest with a bear than a man?
And then you say sometimes a good response for non-notable posters is the pit, which again I don't really understand how it addresses the risk of misanthropy. Perhaps I've misunderstood this part.
I think there is a real risk of doomerism and "end of history in West" thinking but I don't think the issues and contradictions have been properly examined, let alone point to a clear path forward at this stage.
Thank you for this post. I can't say I agree with your reasoning and frankly I find your expanded explanation to be about as frustrating as your initial statement. However I've posted so much about all that stuff, the people who are interested in knowing what I think and my critique are well aware of it at this point.
I appreciate your apology, and I apologise for what I am about to say, but it does not feel genuine. I'm not trying to do some powerplay or something, and I've been told I need to apologise "correctly" before in my life and it's been incredibly hurtful because I did apologise "in the right way". I am in no way trying to do that to you right now, but I'm sure it can come off like that, but please trust it is not my intention. I just feel the need to explain how I experience your apology and why I experience it so.
It seems to me as though you still hold the same view of us as you did before, though you've phrased it better, and the issue is not language, but the viewpoint itself. @GamerGulag@hexbear.net Has put some of the issues into text already, I don't want to dig more into it, since I'd get too heated. It indicates to me that you have not actually taken to heart what was said in response to you. I am certain you wish the best for the place and you wish to move the site forwards, but I do not believe you've really done the self-crit necessary, because I do not get the feeling you understand what it is that should be critiqued.Calling me privileged is frustrating. And you are. You are generalising a userbase, you are by that way calling each of us privileged. I am privileged, we all hold different privileges for sure, but using that as a dismissal is weak. I am disabled. I am unable to walk at times. I was suicidally depressed until recently. I lived for about $100 a month until 6 months ago when I finally got in a more stable situation. I think I might have undiagnosed PTSD from things that happened to me as a political activist. I am queer. I've been housing insecure before in my life, though thankfully that is a long time ago. How many more tickets do I have to tick off before I am sufficiently "not privileged" enough to be able to dunk without having to prostrate myself somewhere? Do I have to live in an active warzone for it to be acceptable, like other users do? Do I need to worry for the safety of my family, like other users do?
I agree there are things that should be critiqued about the tanks. I do not believe you are in a position to make those critiques.
I think you should step down as a mod. That would be a better indicator of self-crit to me.
I don't want you off the site, but I don't think you should be a mod.edit: Also once again talking about worries of "a shadowy mod cabal" is incredibly frustrating. It's only those of you on the other end that talk about that. If you're gonna use your self-crit post to argue against critique, actually present the critique that has been leveled against you. That is not one of a "shadowy cabal" but one of a problematic mindset belonging to a cliquey group of mods. A clique is not a shadowy cabal, it's a group of shitty high schoolers.
edit: wrote more about how this isn't an apology
I really see this post extending the current struggle session, please consider deleting it and not posting for a bit
Listen, I'm going to have to take some time to think about the bulk of the arguments made here, but I want to say:
-I'm glad we (finally) got much fuller and better articulated version of the reasoning behind some of the changes.
-As one of the persons who was baying for the blood of whoever wrote that portion of the mod statement, and who definitely felt hurt by it, I'm glad you stepped up and wrote this. It's no small thing to own up to a mistake like that to a bunch of very angry people.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I accept your apology.
when two women share with each other which men have made them uncomfortable or assaulted them, that is considered gossip.
I know the rest of this is already being talked about but I don't want to breeze over this - I hope this is a case of just not understanding the negative connotations that the word gossip has. I, and most other femme presenting people I know, would not call this gossip because the word itself carries dismissive subtext and undercurrents of historic misogyny. This is a large part of why I am strongly against renaming it this of all things.
i know you don’t call this gossip. it is considered gossip tho. ppl call that gossip and will criticize you for trying to keep other women safe. the negative connotation was considered. i am deleting this post soon
What seems privileged to me is the ability to avoid bigotry. Even as a comfortable first-worlder, I can hardly spend a day without encountering transphobia of some sort, and I'd rather share a laugh about it with some comrades than stew on it all by myself. Just look at the trans megathreads which always contain people recounting their negative experiences, and rightly so. The world often is a hostile place; it's not misanthropy to think so and trying to have a space that avoids talk of popular bigotry in the name of worker's solidarity is, in my eyes, the more privileged desire.
Tbh i think the dunk tank is stupid cuz its really just a stupid idea in total but there is no "dunk tank userbase". Users just do it cuz its a neat little activity on the site labelled as such.
I get the sense that you are doing your best to be a good influence and hope you continue to try to do so considering criticism people have as well.
Had you even intended to use the words "white cishet man vibes" in the official statement posted by Carcosa? I remember someone mentioning the latter response (justification) was pieced together according to the discussion in mod-chat and unfortunately that term was also included which caused the whole new misunderstandings.
now that ive made my case
If you're making a case, that's not self-crit that's a soap box
